1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of balancing vehicle wheels and more particularly to a wheel balance weight and method for facilitating the balancing of vehicle wheels when using an electronic balancer that indicates the proper weight to be applied and the location on the wheel to properly counterbalance the wheel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of weights to counterbalance vehicle wheels is well known for decades. The majority of vehicles wheel weights are applied to the rim flange by means of a steel clip gripping the protruding lip of the rim flange at one end and embedded into a mass of heavy metal at the outer end.
Another means of securing balance weights to vehicle wheels is through the use of adhesive back weights such as have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,177,039 and 3,273,971. The typical adhesive back weight was designed simply to be adherent to a radially inner surface of the wheel and not to be positioned on the rim flange adjacent the protruding lip. Such location requirements are not easily met with the variety of wheels having radial surfaces at differing locations from the rotational axis of the wheel. With weights either of the clip-on type or adhesive-back type, the weights must be applied in the proper weight size at the proper location on the wheel or otherwise the out-of-balance condition is not corrected. The problem of positioning the weight at the proper location is particularly acute utilizing conventional electronic balancers of the prior art and attempting to position the adhesive back weight. The clip-on weight can be secured to the rim flange and protruding lip, but the adhesive back weight of the prior art required the weight to be located on the radially inner surface of the wheel.
For adhesive back weights, the conventional electronic balancers do not take into consideration that the adhesive weights must be applied at the radially inner surface and, therefore, it has been found in practice that the application of the adhesive back weight to the wheel is likely to produce large errors and fail to correct the out-of-balance condition of the vehicle wheel. Further spins of the electronic balancer will be required until the out-of-balance condition has been corrected.
In the application of clip-on weights, it is found, though not as frequently as with adhesive back weights, that operator error or balancer indicator error causes a mispositioning of the balance weight resulting in a continuation of an out-of-balance condition.
The operator then would be faced with the prospect of removing the weight which is a difficult task at best, particularly with the highly adherent adhesives used in the industry today that prevent removal without distruction of the weight. The removal of a mispositioned clip-on weight also results in the loss of that weight because the clip-on weights should not be reused after having been once applied.
When there is a misapplication of the balance weight by reason of a deviation from the correct location for the weight to be applied to the vehicle wheel, there is an inherent deduction in the effective moment at the light spot, and that the only possibility of achieving a proper balance is to add further weight to the wheel. In the past, such additional weights had to be applied adjacent to the misapplied balance weight in an abutting relationship, because there was no possibility for superposing such weights. It should be apparent that any such additional weights in abutting relationship further detract from the appearance of the wheel, particularly when they are applied to the expensive custom wheels used in many automobiles today.